Suikoden 5 - Beat this. The heavy twinking certainly pays off in the final dungeon (aka the only fun part of the game's gameplay), which was quite competent last playthrough but got curbstomped this. Used Zerase, Killey, Nelis, Isato, and Bernadette as my main mages; Miakis, Cathari, Urda, Isabel, Belcoot, Richard, Georg, Mathias, and Shigure as fighters; Freyjadour, Lyon, Lorelai, and Kyle as something in between. Everyone but the mages had Double-Strike Runes, proving those drop too often/are too cheap/too good in this game. Otherwise, pretty obvious bias towards fast PCs with good rune freedom and offensive stats. The folks with one rune slot (except Georg, though even he was kinda disappointing) were all pretty mediocre by the end, as were a few others - Mathias can't really use his tanking well with an M range weapon, Kyle was generically disappointing, Shigure was too fragile for S range and lacked his offensive prowess he had early. The L range twinks were pleasantly surprising despite the lack of multiswings, since their damage potential was very high (second to Miakis) and they could use combos like Power + Double-Strike rather safely.
Lyon's boss was the toughest since it stunned most of my party on the one turn it got, but it also got loads of offence shoved down its throat such that Miakis alone finished it off round 2. Prince's group was the weakest and the only one that let their boss get in two attacks, but those attacks weren't all that scary so whatever. Final needed three turns to drop, and it went a little less well than I liked because I forgot to remove a Crazed Rune from Isabel losing some of my focussed fire. Oh well, at least she allowed me to two-round one of the spirtes. Final final party was the Sun users to use L4 Creation and tank Sun attacks, Bernadette for Kindness Rain and magical tanking, and three fighters (Miakis, Urda, and Isabel seemed my best choices, though I probably should have used Killey instead) to hit as hard as possible. Having two MT healers acting at different times (Bernadette > sprites > Creation > boss was the turn order) made the battle simple, despite Isabel taking something like 440 damage from the Sun Rune's magic attacks).
Yes, I do overthink Suikoden gameplay. What of it?
Got the best ending. Alenia and Zahhak really didn't need to appear in it, as has been ranted about before. Scenes I got this time that I missed last... the Roy/Childerich exchange lived up to the hype, Euram's transformation really didn't. The ideas behind the character worked, but the sudden turnaround just isn't really justified well. Overall, story is about what I remembered it to be - clever, with good writing, and some excellent, human characters... but it takes too long meandering about, its arms tied by being a Suikoden game, to be what it should be. Also silent mains. Bah. My opinion of the game remains unchanged - its strength is very obvious, but it has a scattering of weaknesses in almost every other area, from gameplay to polish to graphics to load times. Ah well.
Devil May Cry 2 - Started this. The game seems depressingly simple (tieing things up is too easy), which is about what I expected. It's very disappointing because otherwise this game seems like it'd, at the very least, be easily better than 3 - the platforming controls are easily the best in the series (innate double jump doesn't hurt), the environments and enemies are decently designed (also, infested helicopters? Awesome). I'm not really super-excited to play through it but it should be worth my time, at least. Is Lucia replay only?
